I try to do my own research and talk to other IT professionals, but it’s always good to get that expertise applied to your own specific situation. I found the discussions we had with Smartt really useful, especially around how we could make our systems more secure and robust.

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3 Simple PR Tips Using Social Media That Increase Brand Exposure

In addition to using online paid advertising programs such as running Facebook or Google AdWords search campaigns to gain brand visibility, PR is an effective marketing approach to reach more prospects and convert sales.

Here are three simple PR tactics you should use:

Seek online endorsements from social media influencers

An online endorsement can be a tweet, blog review, or Facebook status about positive elements of your brand; it can even be an Instagram photo with a short, positive review of your product or service in the caption section.

By receiving an online endorsement from a social media influencer, you can expand your online reach to their social media fans and drive traffic to your website.

Here are three tactics you can use to find social media influencers and seek endorsements from them:

• Google Advanced Search. This Google search engine feature lets you narrow your search to find more targeted results. You can use it to find bloggers who have previously written product reviews.

To do so, enter product review (or other relevant keywords) in the all these words section, select Canada (or wherever you want to target) in the region section, and anywhere in the page (or just in the title etc.) in the terms appearing section. This will let you find articles that have “product review” in the title or body content and were published in Canada.

After you’ve found these articles, start building relationships with these bloggers. This could be through following them on social media, commenting on their blogs, or sending them links to articles in their area of interest. When you feel you have established a level of credibility, ask for a product review. The more prominent the blogger, the more time and effort it will take to achieve a relationship. The more complicated your product, the more of a time and thought investment it will take for the blogger to do a product trial and review. If your product is at all technical, be sure to provide support.

• Followerwonk. This is a Twitter discovery tool; you can use it to find Twitter users who mention certain keywords in their bios, live in a specific location, and have a certain number of followers (e.g. 1000).

For instance, if you’re a local car dealership looking for auto writers in Vancouver to review one of your new vehicles, you can use Followerwonk to find local Twitter users who include relevant keywords such as auto, dealership marketing, auto news, or auto writing in their bios.

To use Followerwonk, enter the keywords you want to search for in the top search box and name of a city, region or province/state in the location box.

Once you’ve discovered these Twitter users, tweet out to them or DM them (if they follow you back) for a review or tweet about your brand.

For example, if you’re a local health product retailer, you can use Tagboard to find photos that contain the keyword #organic or #healthyliving in their captions. Once you’ve found these photos, you can leave a comment in the comments section and ask the account user to share an image of your health products.

Tagboard is simple to use. All you have to do is enter the targeted keyword in the search box on the homepage and filter the results to only show Instagram pictures!

Publish articles on LinkedIn

As you may already know, you can publish articles on LinkedIn in your account. If you didn’t know, here are the two ridiculously complicated steps you need to take to publish articles on LinkedIn:

• An article that’s shared through a status update may go unnoticed by your audience due to the large amount of content shared on LinkedIn. When a LinkedIn article is published, however, LinkedIn sends a notification under the Notification section in a user’s account. This helps the writer and the company he represents gain attention.

• LinkedIn articles appear on Pulse News, a RSS feed built in LinkedIn. This helps the content get distributed to LinkedIn users worldwide.

• You can develop an online followership. Similar to subscribing to a newsletter or ‘liking’ a Facebook page, LinkedIn has a ‘follow’ feature which lets users subscribe to other users’ posts. This feature helps brands develop an online community that’s interested in reading their content or learning about the companies’ latest product launches.

(You can ‘follow’ a user on a blog page)

(Or the user’s account page)

Write coverages about events

Companies today act like publishers; they write content regarding latest industry news to gain readership (web visits) and stay on top of consumers’ mind. And similar to journalists or publishers, businesses often attend events and cover the events afterwards. Why? So the event hosts will share the articles, which help the companies increase online exposure.

For example, a health product retailer may attend an outdoor yoga event held by a yoga studio and write an article called “Why Doing Outdoor Yoga is the Best Way to Spend Your Weekend” afterwards.

Once the article is published, the retailer can tweet it to the yoga studio or mention the yoga studio in a Facebook status. This type of outreach encourages the studio to share the article on their social channels – helping the retailer increase its online reach.

PR is an effective marketing approach to connect with the right audience. By using the three tactics above, you can find relevant social media influencers and expand your reach to their social fans, develop a LinkedIn community, and increase brand exposure by covering events and receiving social shares!